Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[Liam_Harper]

Not quite, they do know what they are doing, hence sage's entire mechanic of "damage to heal"
That's exactly how a healer is supposed to be played: healing and doing damage.

They just don't give a damn

Sage is not a pinnacle of great design. It has a few dps cd's, but you'll largely be spamming one button. It's toolkit isn't new and innovative, it's gauge heals are variations of SCH's aether heals, even down to having the same cooldown. It has the usual medica and cure I clone along with some cooldowns that are essentially Whispering dawn and Fey Blessing clones. It's heal buff is like a targeted fairy embrace.

Sage is not a major improvement on heal design, it's a tiny step in the right direction and an improvement on SCH but that's about it. Look forward to another expansion of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.

[Recon1o6]

Sage is not a pinnacle of great design. It has a few dps cd's, but you'll largely be spamming one button. It's toolkit isn't new and innovative, it's gauge heals are variations of SCH's aether heals, even down to having the same cooldown. It has the usual medica and cure I clone along with some cooldowns that are essentially Whispering dawn and Fey Blessing clones. It's heal buff is like a targeted fairy embrace.

Sage is not a major improvement on heal design, it's a tiny step in the right direction and an improvement on SCH but that's about it. Look forward to another expansion of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.

I noticed that, i was using its main mechanic as an example in the sense that they absolutely know what healers should be.
But they dont give a damn- hence 1 button spam with a couple of ogcds.

I probably should have put more detail in my earlier response. I can assure you though, I will not be playing sage, sch or whm in the next expansion. Ast is too early to tell but so far its looking like its aoe game is better than its single target game and they have at least returned lord/lady of crowns

[Acece]

Tbh the difference between sage and whm is actually not much different in the dps department. Sage has a nuke and a dot like every other healer, a 45 sec bigger damage gcd(I think), a mini dark arts thingy, and a two min big damage gcd. Meanwhile whm has a nuke and a dot, a 45 sec ogcd and a 90 sec nuke(conditional).
Sage might have more compelling healing though.

[tinythinker]

A low skill floor is fine when the ceiling hasn't collapsed. I recall leveling SCH as a second job in 3.2 and no, I didn't know how to use many buttons. But I could still shield, direct heal, place my faerie/execute faerie commands, and use DOTs in a simple and often reactionary way. I'll admit, the more "advanced" thinking and planning was beyond me, so it was really rudimentary play, but for dungeons and normal trials that was fine. Yet there was a high skill ceiling for those who were progging or just bored.

Even without the skill ceiling being as high as before, Scholar could still be more interesting. First, of course, would be to make sure the skills flowed together better. Second, they could have the faeries be more interesting since they are the standout feature. Something similar to what they appear to be doing with SMN. Add a third faerie, then leave Seraph to kind of be the healer's Bahamut. So you then builder-spender (or us charges on a timer) that can activate the different faeries to alter the effects of existing skills or have a new button light up. These don't have to be overly complicated, and can be designed in a way that even a clueless person still gets some benefit no matter which faerie they use for regular content. But, for high end content, the differences could really result in at least a somewhat more significant advantage. (And honestly even just having cool new visual effects really standing out for faerie summoning would make SCH more interesting.)

The floor would still be low (yay for me and my super-smooth gaming brain), the ceiling is not as high as it was in HW (sorry :\ ), but it could still be a significant upgrade.


EDIT upon re-reading: Yes, I recall the faeries having their own unique abilities that we could activate or leave to the pet "AI", but that isn't what I'm referring to in my suggestion taking a page from the new SMN. The little pet is still there just like for SMN but there would be phases initiated by activating one of the faeries. To use a poor example made up on the fly, perhaps one of the faerie's causes Biolysis to do more damage for X seconds each time Broil or Art of War is activated giving a kind of damage window. Another Faerie might allow Art of War to Blind targets. They would also have a unique affect on at least one healing spell as well. Sorry for the bad examples, I'm sure SCH mains can think of better ones.

[Roeshel]

Sage is not a pinnacle of great design. It has a few dps cd's, but you'll largely be spamming one button. It's toolkit isn't new and innovative, it's gauge heals are variations of SCH's aether heals, even down to having the same cooldown. It has the usual medica and cure I clone along with some cooldowns that are essentially Whispering dawn and Fey Blessing clones. It's heal buff is like a targeted fairy embrace.

Sage is not a major improvement on heal design, it's a tiny step in the right direction and an improvement on SCH but that's about it. Look forward to another expansion of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.

Sage has 4 different AoEs on GCD which makes them the most interesting healer for dungeons. I never get why most people are taking into consideration only raids that are target dummies with mechanics. I had already done more than 1000 dungeon runs before even having a savage or extreme trial unlocked. And despite all of the mechanics and raidwides I still think that big dungeons pulls are more interesting when it comes to playing a healer. I really want the gates to be removed from the EW dungeons.

There are also 4 other spells yet to be revealed. One or more of them potentially being yet another damaging spell.

Edit:
The missing spells are actually 5. One of them is surely an attacking spell, we saw it in the trailer and the benchmark

[Axxion]

just wondering does anyone know how the jp side feels about the changes?

[Truen]

I know I'll be playing Sage, no doubt. I can't wait tbh. Screw the SCH; it was fun in 4.0 but I just can't do it anymore.

[AngeliouxRein]

Yeah.. I’ll at least have one of my mains try out Sage. I get Yoshi was just bumbling around with it but I kind of wish someone was there fighting something just to have a better idea on how some of those skills work. This is gonna be one hell of an expansion..for better and worst…

[EaMett]

Sage is not a pinnacle of great design. It has a few dps cd's, but you'll largely be spamming one button. It's toolkit isn't new and innovative, it's gauge heals are variations of SCH's aether heals, even down to having the same cooldown. It has the usual medica and cure I clone along with some cooldowns that are essentially Whispering dawn and Fey Blessing clones. It's heal buff is like a targeted fairy embrace.

Sage is not a major improvement on heal design, it's a tiny step in the right direction and an improvement on SCH but that's about it. Look forward to another expansion of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.

It's really what SCH should've been. Down to the melee component. I'm sad because I liked that and the SCH aesthetics and now I need to choose between the gameplay I wanted on a class I don't like or the aesthetic I like with a hollow gameplay.

[Calysto]

As always, subpar quality for healers :
Dps/tanks slides : 2-4 lines about the job changes
Healers slides : 1-2 lines about the changes (not counting SGE here)

Most job got a majority of their kits/rotations shown on the trailer. AST got a good bit, WHM a bit and SCH almost nothing ?

Was the SCH trailer bad on purpose ?
Did the SCH complaining for 2 years piss them off ?
Making a cool "upgraded" version of something(even if it's just a cooler animation with little to no potency to back it up in the end) would have been easy and have players exited about what it could be.
Showing Seraph ; maybe Selene ; ED just so we know it hasn't be removed again...
Heck, just some nice weaving would do the trick.

So many things to do to have a part of the SCH players be at least in a "eh, ok, we'll see" state instead of the same "SE IS BAD" that's been on for 2 years (kinda rightly so)...

I can understand them "not wanting to go back to 3.0" ; but the concept was supposed to be "bulding from 5.0" not "rollback to 5.0"

I also don't trust their "Healers split". They gave up the idea for M/O tanks but somehow felt It would work here ?
the PF going to be either "we need the heal"=2 pure or "we need both"=1 of each ; and it's probably end with "moar dps"=2 barrierSGE